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I'm not a fan of Chinese made goods (although I like their food a lot) and I think the ax might fall real soon and we'll all be sorry that we borrowed so much of their money to buy so much of their goods. That said, I haven't had quite the experience you describe with Chinese made grinders. I bought four Cummins (Chinese made) 4 1/2" angle grinders a couple of years ago when the Cummins dog and pony show was in town; 2@$10 ea and 2@$20 ea. The "better" ones advertised needle bearings, and blah, blah, blah. One of them failed almost before I could get it out of the box---burned the brushes, then burned the replacement brushes. I only started using the other one a few weeks ago, but it seems okay so far. The $10 one is fine, but weak. I took advantage of Harbor Freight's retail store return policy twice to get a decent Chicago Electric 9" angle grinder. At the second return, the store manager told me that I might want to buy a Milwaukee grinder if I was going to use it that hard. I consider it a limited use tool; I'm sure I'd burn it out if I used it the way I use the 9" Milwaukees at the shop (hard and long.) Sounds like I'm having exactly the experience you described, doesn't it? Well, I wanted to get the bad news out of the way first. The good Chinese angle grinders you can get at Harbor Freight are the 4" and 4 1/2" Chicago Electric ones. I haven't been able to wear one out yet despite countless hours of hard, dirty use, countless drops onto concrete floors and driveways and, in general, a totally undeserved lack of proper respect. I would have treated it a lot better if I'd known I was going to have it so long; I thought it was just a $14 throw away tool. I've got several others that I use regularly so that I can keep grinding discs, wire wheels, polishers, etc. set up and ready to use. Same story; no sign of wanting to quit. I love good tools, but I'll take them where I get them. Brand names don't impress me that much; practically every good brand I've ever purchased has let me down at least once if I buy enough of their products. Stan
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